A Grandmother’s (Thrifted) Flower Garden

Village Quilters Quilt Guild holds a quilt show every other year, with a show this year on October 24-25 at the College of Lake County. I bring this up to explain this little quilt, as it is for the upcoming show. One of the sections of my guild’s show is known as a “Quilt Challenge,” managed by a member who comes up with a creative theme. The finished quilt needs to be 12” square, and follow the guidelines given. This year the granddaughter-grandmother team running the challenge created the requirement of a quilt with a “3-D” element – meaning something pokes off the surface of the fabric. There are any number of ways to accomplish this, and if you attend the show you will likely see some remarkable ones.

Initially, I wasn’t particularly inspired. Nothing about origami quilt-making or dimensional applique was peaking my interest. On one of my thrift outings, I found a vintage lace doily with a yellow center that looked so much like a flower, I began to envision a collage quilt. As my brain began pinging about, I grew this imaginary garden with found items, including buttons, flowers, and lace. As with any garden, I needed to prepare the ground first, deciding in this case velvets would offer a tactile foundation. Off I went to locate some interesting clothing I could chop up. Modern fabrics – and the clothes made from them – tend to have a great deal of lycra in them which may make comfortable, stretchy clothing, but is not ideal for quilt projects. I needed to find vintage pieces, and luckily located some vintage green velvet and a 1980s child dress in dark blue velvet, with astonishingly awful lace around the collar. I’d dug up the foundation, now to plant the garden.

Digging around my sewing room, I uncovered a number of doilies and three dimensional flower pins. I don’t recall how I came to own the two larger ones, but they were perfect for my flowerbed. The small pink silk flower, however, was a Village Quilters Quilt Show award ribbon from 1995, and I sacrificed it to my garden. The leather flowers were purse doodads found while thrifting which I parted from their cheap (unloved) purses. They ended up causing a bit of annoyance as I had to fetch all sorts of tools to pry them apart from their keyring hooks. They had leaves as well, which I pried out of their irksome metal rings, and tacked down, but felt I needed more flowers sprinkled about.

Now is time for me to make a confession, all to introduce the fun crochet buttons in my flower garden, and likely the red buttons as well. My husband claims I am shameless - feeling the pilfering I am about to confess to is a bit of a questionable behavior. My side of the equation is that the thrifting Bins outlet is the final destination for myriad piles of clothing, and, if not sold, are heading out the door for recycling. Basically, while thrifting at the Bins, I keep teeny tiny scissors (pink naturally) in my pocket. When I come across clothing with fabulous buttons, I snip them off, much like taking a cutting of an unusual plant you find on a walk and want to plant in your garden. The snipped buttons are purchased by weight so realistically they cost pennies, but I am putting some part of the unloved clothing to use before it becomes landfill. Many times the item is already missing a button or two – it seems the vast majority of thrifting shoppers have no clue how to sew a button (or fix a seam, or patch a hole, or mend a hem). I will also confess that I often pick up amazing things because they are missing a button – which I can easily remedy. Given how expensive clothing – and crafting supplies – are, I don’t feel bad “reusing” old items or finding buried treasures I can repair to use or sell.

Once I had my garden designed, I used temporary glue and pins to hold the items in place. Basting the piece with a fun 1970s garden fabric remnant on the back, I was ready to tack everything in place. I used the quilting to adhere all the loose pieces of lace and the edges of the three dimensional flowers, though I did hand sew the buttons and leather pieces down. Such a fun project – both serendipitous for the fun it brought me making it, and the use of found treasures. As I am a grandmother, called Nana, I decided my ideal garden is one grown with fabric and thrifted treasures, not the one I should be tending to outside in my yard. Come to the show in October and decide for yourself which entry in the Quilt Challenge is the most successful.